Thursday, February 09, 2012

Titanic Survivor Helen Candee, 1621 New Hampshire Ave

The "Unsinkable" Helen Candee

Many people walking by the large townhouse at 1621 New
Hampshire, which seems to blend in with its neighbors so well that it often
goes unnoticed, might be surprised to know that it was built and owned by a
prominent woman’s rights suffragist and Titanic survivor, and was later the
site of a major jewel heist. A single
woman by the name of Helen Churchill Candee obtained a building permit for its
construction on April 27, 1905; she also had a then small fortune of $20,000
needed for its construction.

Candee indicated that the house was designed by the
architectural firm of Wood, Donn, and Deming, and would be built by contractor
John H. Nolan. The architectural firm
had been established just three years prior, in 1902, and was comprised of Waddy
Wood, Edward Donn, and William Deming.

Candee was born Helen Churchill Hungerford on October 5,
1858, the daughter of New York City merchant Henry Hungerford and his wife,
Mary Churchill. She married Edward
Candee of Norwalk, Connecticut, and had two children by him, Edith and
Harold. After the abusive Edward Candee
abandoned the family, Candee supported herself as a writer for popular
magazines such as Scribner's and The Ladies' Home Journal. She initially wrote on the subjects most
familiar to her - genteel etiquette and household management - but soon
branched into other topics such as child care, education, and women's rights.

Candee was a strong feminist, as
evidenced by her best-selling first book, How Women May Earn a Living
(1900). Her second book, An Oklahoma
Romance (1901), was a novel that promoted the possibilities of settlement
in Oklahoma Territory. Having become an
established literary figure, Candee moved to Washington in 1904 where she
established herself as one of the first professional interior decorators; her
clients included Henry Stimson and Theodore Roosevelt. Candee’s book, Decorative Styles and
Periods (1906), embodied her principles of design: careful historical
research and absolute authenticity.

Candee was in Europe in the spring of 1912, when she
received a telegram informing her that her son, Harold, had been injured in an
automobile accident. Candee hurriedly
booked her passage home on a new luxury ocean liner, the Titanic.

Candee survived the great ship’s sinking, in spite of
fracturing her ankle while boarding lifeboat No. 6. Despite the pain of her injury, Helen managed
to row with the others, clearing the side of the sinking ship by a few hundred
yards. She was also able to lend moral support to Margaret “Unsinkable Molly”
Brown, the legendary Denver millionairess and fellow suffragette, as she took
control of the boat in the absence of leadership from the crewman in charge,
Quartermaster Robert Hichens. Under
Molly’s direction, Candee and the other women rowed Boat 6 to the shelter of
the rescue ship, Carpathia.

Candee eventually
sold 1621 New Hampshire to a single woman by the name of Miss Mary Barclay
Adams, the daughter of one of the owners of the Washington Evening Star newspaper. Adams
shared her new house with a close friend named Dora E. B. Merryman during the
entire tenure of her ownership, which would last until 1928. Merryman was described
in the local newspaper as “the most beautiful woman in Virginia.”

In March of 1911,
both Adams and Merryman made headlines in the local newspapers when they
reported a theft of jewelry from the house valued at $10,000, nearly half the
value of the house itself. The theft was
“one of the largest of its kind ever known in this city.” After contacting a local maid staffing
service on March 21, 1911, Adams had hired a maid that said her name was Mary
Miller, following an in-person interview that same day. The maid reported to work the following
day.

She went about her
duties, but also gathered up jewels from both individuals undetected by other
servants, and then made an excuse to run an errand to a pharmacy at the corner
of New Hampshire and 17th Street.
She never returned.

The following day,
the March 24, 1911 edition of the Washington
Post reported additional details of the crime. Police had learned that the imposter maid had
forged her own letters of recommendations in an elaborate scheme in New York
City, where she rented a luxury flat for several weeks, and posted advertisements
for maids of her own. When they showed
up for an interview, “Miller” politely asked them to leave their letters while
she made a decision to hire them. She
had compiled enough letters to carry out the scam in various cities for years,
knowing that the demand for maids often outweighed any investigation into their
backgrounds. She would often strike the
same day she was hired before anyone could be contacted to confirm references.

Police assumed that
‘Miller’ headed immediately to New York City, after changing out of her maids’
uniform, found in Union Station. More
than a year later, police got the break they were looking for when a woman by
the real name of Sophie Beckendorf was arrested and imprisoned in the New York
Tombs. Under pressure, she had given up
the names of Joseph and Lottie Vogel who had purchased all of her stolen jewels
over the course of several years. They
were located in the Hotel Elsmere in New York in November of 1912, and killed
during a shootout with police.

The house later served as a residence and doctor’s office
for Dr. Leo T. Brown, and was purchased in 2007 by the Fund for American
Studies, who is renovating the building for use as additional office space to
their headquarters, located across the street at 1706 New Hampshire Avenue.

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About Me

Paul K. Williams is the President of Historic Congressional Cemetery, and is also the proprietor of Kelsey & Associates, "The House History People," a small firm that specializes in creating a genealogy for a house or building; we research who built it and when, who designed it, who has owned it, and who has lived there and what they did for a living. We focus on the houses in Washington, DC and some other communities across the United States. I've published 19 books with Arcadia, History Press, and Anova Books on neighborhoods in
Washington and my hometown of Skaneateles, NY...titles below. We've
sold more than 45,000 to date! We're publishing Modern SW DC in the fall of 2016, and we are working on a "How to Research Your House History" book.
I've been the author of the popular "Scenes of the Past" column for the
InTowner newspaper beginning in April of 2001.
Visit us at www.WashingtonHistory.com